


Andro

by decaf_death



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, decaf tries origional fiction, this is weird but here we go I guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-11 07:53:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7039495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decaf_death/pseuds/decaf_death
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Struggling to survive in a wasteland, Raq must find a way to save life as they know it before the Extermination post- Dias Irae begins. Will they be able to find a way out before it's too late? What about the others?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Log: 1

We are not I. 

In the time before we might have been called I, but that time like other relics of the anarchal past have been lost forever to us. There is no I, except to the Brightest, they are permitted to be singular because they were chosen to be of the light. Darkness is collective, hive minded, and so we are. We are because everyone is. We were born into this, offspring of plural, born many, born inherited. Awaited. Singular is a sin. 

I am in hell.


	2. Log: 23

Day Cycle: 500

I was told a very long time ago, that if you stare into the abyss long enough, that it will start to stare back at you. Or maybe I’m the abyss staring out into the mortal world. The toes of my boots hang off the edge, teetering between falling into the nothingness below and the nothingness above. I cannot see the bottom of the chasm. I cannot see where fog meets empty sky, and everything has a thick coat of white powder. It clings to the shoulders of my coat and the lining of my lungs, scraping against the walls with every breath like hammer and chisel to stone. Loneliness makes a dwelling in my bones and in the soles of my shoes, the whole earth is still and I think to myself, that this must be the end of the world.  
Wake up. 

Tighten your boots. Breakfast.  
All of my days begin in the same way. If you can really call them days, waking hours are irregular at best and sleep even more so. I like them that way, unpredictability makes advantage. Walk right, left, drag your hand across the time smoothed slab of stone. The stones are the only things that remember your touch these days. Walk silent as a shadow. Silent as a shadow. A long time ago I was told that if I didn’t want to be seen I only had to wish it so. Wish it was that easy now. I’m the only one here, but there are others elsewhere. I like it that way. Turn right. Open the door. There is no light here, but my hands and my feet know. We’ve learned to touch the walls and listen hard, we live like the blind in a world that cannot see us.  
It makes me feel alone to know that I’ll never tell you all of this in person. No one else knows what I know. I’m the last of my kind, the last of my story. But I can write and that is more than most. I have already committed the sin of Singularity, why not add to my crimes? It’s not like the sentence can get any more severe.  
My fingers reach out for the coat in the dust room before the airlock. I know it to be weathered and faded tan canvas, my finds hang from its every orifice, a good ten chuts heavier than empty. It hugs my aching shoulders, I shrug into it with practiced motion. With it comes the comfort of knowing routine. I walk forward, there is a metal shelf in the narrow darkness, my cowl and my mask sit upon it. I hold them against my stomach as I pull on the gloves from my coat pocket, the cowl comes next. The mask waits, the mask pinches my face. I get dressed in the same way each day.  
I walk forward.  
My hands reach out into the dark and land upon the grips I know bear the weight of my dirty fingerprints. Turn the wheel left. Hear the air seal spring open. I squint into the intense heat and light, a world on fire before me, only a slit through the crack in the door of the airlock. I lift up my mask and it suctions to my face in the way it always does, I swing the door out and into the furious and dastardly wind. Immediately my matted navy hair whips around my face and my eyes burn through my skull. I am the watcher of the eternal night that dares to enter day. I am doomed. I am free. 

I walk forward.  
Time passes and the ache in my visual cortex dulls from a roar to a growl, I am finally able to take satisfaction in casting my gaze up into the sickly yellow-grey vastness of the sky. I cannot tell where it begins and the dust ends, no one can. Even though the sky is dead, it is sky and I do adore it because I know it is not mine to have. Though my mask keeps me alive it does nothing for the smell of sulphur and decay that permeates everything. I wonder idly as I close the airlock door at the idea that maybe the gas bombs are no longer being hurled into Sector Two. I like to think that they cannot bomb us forever, but I know that they can. They will always find a way to destroy, so long as those like me can create.  
Against all odds and desires, my own included, I walk forward into the chaos. I know that 47 steps that are 22 and ½ inches long in front of me there is a building and a stairwell. I know that at the top of that stairwell there is a balcony, and from that point I can see all. It is the highest point in this sector, and it is mine. It is not difficult to go unnoticed when you are Topside. I am less cautious here because I know that I am the only thing. It is an easy yet brutal isolation to be in the sole inhabitant of a wasteland.  
I have become the scavenger that I so detested once before.  
I collect everything I come upon. Bits of broken metal fall into my sachet. If its conductive or warm or edible I take it back into the tunnels. This is how I live. When the things to collect run out I will die as I live. This is why I know I will never tell you these things myself.  
The wind changes direction and the white dust clears for a fraction of a moment, the gleam of sun on shined metal before the horizon line catches my eye. Alice has found me once again.  
Deftly I dissend from my post at the tower and seek out my prize, it is a longer walk than I like to take and my filter is close to expiration, I will have to find a replacement before I venture out again. Presented to me on top of another pile of rubble is the no longer necessary, and rather beat up helmet of a discarded Sentinel. It is a good deal heavier than it should be yet no longer contains a head, I know better than to inspect further Topside for fear of contaminating whatever lurks inside.  
The door sticks, but eventually opens. I rush inside to the cool darkness with the helmet under my arms, pulling the door shut as fast as I can, chest heaving and lungs aching as they always do after a round of air-poisoning. I rip off my mask artlessly as I sink to the ground. I know that while the Earth is dead, I am not the only survivor. It’s comical the number of days I have told myself this: today will be the day that I do not die.  
Each journey into the outside ends in the same way for me, chest aches and hammering heart. Trial and error wasn’t necessary on my part to staying alive. When you watch others die for their mistakes you learn not to make any. I spotted something out there for myself, hopefully nothing else spotted me too. It has been 67 day cycles since they last sent anyone to my sector, I recall the shiny steel, the high pitched ring before detonation. Idly I reach my hand to my side, the ridges and valley’s of the scars there aches at the memory. When I think on that day I thank the world for Alice. I have lots of time to think.  
They know I’m still here, they just want to see in what state. They will try to kill me again. But I will wait them out. I will always wait them out.  
Alice, thank you for the writing paper, thank you more for the letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, it helps me a bunch if you would be so kind as to leave me some feedback. It means so much to me that people take time out of their busy days to read my work. I hope it has brought you some sort of joy. 
> 
> Neurotically yours,  
> Decaf


	3. Found Artifact 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Letter from Alice

I hope this finds you Raq,  
I bartered with the others, I know you don’t like me to but I knew you needed the writing paper and you’re too stubborn to do it yourself. There’s more bacta for your wounds and a couple insta-bread rations for your trouble from last time. I’ll try to get my hands on more, I know it’s not fair trade. I’ll make good on it I promise I just need more time.   
We hope you’re doing alright but we need more supplies badly. They won’t tell me how desperate we are, but they cut the rations again. I’ll see if I can get my hands on some more reading material for you if you can bring me some chromium tablets.   
Stay safe, and if you can't do that much stay alive,  
Alice


	4. Log: 24

More dank labyrinthine halls and alcoves, a porthole in the floor. I am at the furthest point from the airlock. I turn, the seal breaks and my boots encounter the metal rungs of the ladder and a soft blue and green illumination begins to reflect off of the staples and studs that hold me together. My eyes adjust more easily to this softer, kinder light out of the darkness.   
At once I start to strip away all of the layers of myself. Once I am left in the most exposed I will allow in the humming warmth, my short pants and a sleeveless shirt. I remove the control panel from the right side of my neck. The dust and dirt crusted piece of flexible polymer comes off with a small click, it stretches from the curve behind my ear, to down across my collarbone and my shoulder blade. The means of which they would access my system database. Yet I am the only one who is allowed this intimacy now. I’ve tried to shut out the memories of the operations, the amputations and reattachment but they are so deep rooted in my being that they cannot be eliminated from the hard drive I never wanted. We are called Enhanced. I feel like the Accursed is more fitting.   
If I could tell where machine ends and I begin I would cut it all away from my flesh.  
My sanctuary as it appears to me now is softly lit with digital displays and electric bulbs alike. Cords cover the duracrete walls and floors like overgrown vines and serpents intertwined in some strange garden of Eden.  
I sit before it and allow the hum of those of my kind to subdue my stresses for a time. The tip of the calibration cryosensor is cool against the calluses of my hands, it clicks into place, forming the input connection that I have been made to crave. I feel my small intercalibration eyelid slide into place and I am once again plunged into darkness, though I can still hear everything around me. As my system interface begins to load I distantly feel my limbs disengage, the spaces inbetween my joints opening to expose my true nature. I navigate the multitude of screens with movement behind my eyelids, selecting inputs and entering all of the right data, uploading my consciousness to another location. Should my carbon body decay I will remain here for as long as I can, until someone finds me and accesses my memory database while it functions in a low power operation. I like to think of it as afterlife insurance. I try not to think about it.   
This is the only way for me to see out into the world, truly, for me to observe them from a safe distance, like living behind glass. I hate them for what they are and what they’ve done, but they cannot be ignored. The garish symbol of the Cooperative Technocracy of Zion fills my mind with a brightness that makes me wish I could squint. It undulates and shifts with the connection quality, for now I can only access what they want me to see. They tell us to Live Better through them, through abstinence of pleasure and desire, to want not, for the Blinding One will deliver you to the Sacred Fire through service to the Cooperative. We are because everyone is. Take your pills and go to work, make families and take your pills and die for the collective. We are because everyone is.   
Except me and whatever else survived Dies Irae.  
I can feel the bionic carapace in the computational pulsar functioning normally, I proceed into uncharted cyberspace. My body is a highway of ones and zeros, the influx separating me from my carbon form I am floating through a world I was never meant to be a part of. In these moments I feel, blissfully, nothing.   
Names dance across my consciousness. Each the patron of the Sacred Dedications.

Lendili, Dynamic Cybernetics.   
Idirn, Military Probability.   
Xidevath, Cosmic Functional Neuroleadership.  
Gassim, Organic Computation.  
In’Nalus, Parachronology.   
Nollerieri, Conceptual Ecology.  
Kouro, Ritualistic Protocomputation. 

They are Whole. They are the Brightest ones, they will bring us to glory. And they have something to tell us. We are grateful for the information they bless us with. We are because everyone is. External biocentric paralysis sets in and I am trapped here until they decide that we may leave. There are others here. We cannot speak to one another but we can feel. We do feel, as one we breathe and live and long for companionship that cannot be. I long to reach out to them. A voice smooth as parasynthetic skin creeps into my support protective filter of the corrosion port. I detest the voice of Ledili.   
“Greetings Cooperative, allow yourself to forget, and listen. Be grateful for the information you are about to receive. Blessed is The Blinding One. Blessed are the sheep and the Shepherd. We are because everyone is.” The unwavering symbol sensitizes my internal optic cortex, I wish I could look away. I find these messages tiring, an irritation, a reminder that I am completely and utterly alone in my relative freedom from their dogma of blind obedience. “Your Patrons of the Seven Sacred Dedications have computed, Extermination will begin on the day 296 of Froar this revolution about our most Holy Fire. You are awaited by the Blinding One, you will be welcomed by the Blinding One. Obey. We are because everyone is.”   
They have decided that I am done listening. I am disconnected. I am alone in the darkness. I feel my body fall with a thick thud against the floor, because I cannot receive the updates I need my hardware becomes increasingly difficult to work with during transmission. I remove my cryosensor, it falls to the floor next to my ear with a muffled thud. The tears that fall unevenly down my scarred face carry the same gravity as the discarded piece of me. I was promised an eternity and I have been given 204 days.  
I have 203 days to tell myself that today is not the day I die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this far! I really appreciate your time, and I would be ever grateful for some feedback if you can spare another moment for me. I hope you're having a good day, and if you're not I hope reading my work has helped in the slightest. 
> 
> Neurotically yours,  
> Decaf


	5. Log: 25

I remember the first time I saw the Sentinels they unleashed upon us, their people, their citizens. These were not the ravenous monsters of my childish nightmares, no these were far more chrome than my dreams had concocted. I hope you never have to see them.

  
Despite the horrors I’ve seen, there's always this deeply romanticized version of myself lurking in the back of my mind, running from those oppressing me, surviving on nothing and beating the odds. She’s just inside my mind, but it's the only lie I've been told that I wish was true. I’m doing what I can but someday soon that will not be enough. Even so, easy and purposeful death is not an option. I know they would prefer for us all to just lay down and die, by merely existing I throw a wrench in their works. And so, until I cannot exist any longer, I will do whatever it takes to survive.

  
I don’t remember much from before Dias Irae, other than you not very much at all, no one does. We’ve been made to forget and start anew. This world, here and now beneath my boots is all I know, all any of us know. Just like the all the signs say: Welcome to Zion.

  
Welcome home.

I’m the only Runner left of what used to be a pretty well balanced group, the others I started with in the tunnels are all long dead or moved on now. That’s okay. I look up into the sickly yellow/grey sky through my scratched and mistreated goggles. It’s easier to breathe around the new filter but I still hate the mask. Someday I’m going to save enough data to trade for one of those nice and shiny military ones, like the one you used to wear. I wish I had kept it.

  
I shake my head a little as I look back down into the cracked and acid-bleached street. It’s early Day Cycle, and what little light we get is starting to leak through the plumes above that never seem to leave. Everything Topside looks starved. Myself included I suppose.

  
I’m walking towards Sector Seven, what used to be a warehouse and industrial district. It’s still mostly intact, not hit as hard as the residence sectors. I try to keep these trips as short as possible, being Topside is usually reserved only for those who wish to die or who already have.

  
I need something I can trade, but more importantly I need to find Alice.

  
My vision always sweeps back and forth cautiously, I hope to see danger before it sees me. I slow my breathing and my steps. I spot a small broken window further down the alley at a good height to climb through, I haven’t finished picking apart this side of the building and it’s not part of anyone else's turf that I know of. Fair is fair. If you don’t mark your turf you can’t really be mad at anyone for picking it now can you.

  
I pull my cowl back so that I fit a little easier through the whole, careful to not leave any traces of hair or blood on the frame where it juts out with sharp glass and metal edges. As far as anyone else is concerned, I don’t really exist. I slide through with relative ease and light up my torch.

  
All that meets my eyes in the dark warehouse at first is three Grims on the center of the dirt covered floor. They’ve been dead for a while; any exposed skin has changed any number of colors and has started to rot. The stench thankfully does not permeate my mask any more than the air itself. I take what useful things I can from them and start on the rest of the place. I’m well aware that looting corpses and whatnot should be below me, but the ends justify the means in this case, one of them had a water ration.

  
I poke around for a bit to see if they hid anything of major value like memory sticks or upgrade chips in any of the crates, but I come up empty handed. I freeze in my tracks when I hear it, something off in one corner- metal on metal, a scratching, no, now a clicking. Silently I crouch down behind an old stack of wood pallets, drawing my plasma gun from where it rests on my right thigh, cool in my hand and silently I turn off my torch.

  
I focus my hearing around me while my system switches over to Threat Mode in the low light. The Drone has not spotted me yet, and as long as I stay out of sight I should be left alive. It's on the other side of the room now, hovering along its path, following protocol just as I am.

  
It’s too difficult to hold my breathing and keep quiet, besides, the thing can run searches for days before it runs out of power.

  
Carefully, so very carefully I slow my breath and inch out from where I’m wedged between the pallets and the rough brick, I duck behind another row of crates. I’m not a good enough shot to get the stupid thing while it hovers in its erratic, bug like search pattern. We, the Drone and I, keep up this dance for a long time, long enough for me to make it back to the side of the room I came in from. I almost made it back to the window, almost.

  
Foolishly I poked my head out yet again to see if it was safe enough to make another move, just a fraction of a moment later bullets started whizzing past my head and sirens went off all around us at their feverish pitch. I grabbed a nearby splintered board and smashed out what was left of the window before leaping through it. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears over everything else, and bullets still came flying around the corner. I ran as fast as my feet would carry me, slapping the hard ground and arms pumping. I refused to let myself look back.

  
Swiftly I was grabbed hard and pulled hard by two large hands into an alcove between two buildings that leaned together like crooked teeth. The brick hit the skin of my side and head like a sandblast, but not for long before I was being dragged down another alleyway. It felt like I had been running for an Aegis. My muscles burned and my side was stitched tightly.

  
The Drone rounded the corner again, shooting it’s barrage of electro-laced bullets at us, I caught one in my left calf. The pain started to boil beneath the surface, bright red blood seeping through the rough denim of my pants. I stumble but know I’ve got to keep moving. Keep moving or die. Keep moving. I stumble again, falling down this time. The man that grabbed me and I work to haul my protesting body back up but the white hot pain of the blast seers my mind and my limbs. It’s a struggle to breathe and I hear my screams over the alarms. My operating system starts mandatory shutdown protocol to redirect power to my wound, I try to override it but it’s too late.

  
There's another set of hands on me, muffled words, shouting, smoke and shadows fall over my vision and everything is under cool blue water. There is no blood. There is no pain.

That’s all I remember before I blacked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	6. Log: 26

My sleep was dreamless.

  
I did fade in and out of consciousness a few times, voices buzzing and lights too bright, thick needle passing through my skin again and again. Making me more patchwork than human. The pain faded in and out too, white hot, dull ache, nothingness, numbness, repeat. I couldn't feel my heartbeat, my chest heave. It was all very surreal.

  
I woke with a start in a bed that didn’t belong to me, arms flailing and eyes wild. My jacket, cowl, mask, and overshirt were all gone. My bare face and shoulders unable to cope with the frigid cool of the room broke into gooseflesh.

  
“No Raq it’s alright, I’m here it’s just me.” I could see her dark oval face hovering above me, eyes kind and face relaxed. My arms clutched her smaller ones with my dull nails and bandaged hands as she leaned to ease me back down onto the plush softness of the bed. A deep ache in my left leg reminded me why I was there.

  
I pull the blankets aside to get a better look at the damage, she tries to stop me. I’m stronger, even this injured.

  
“How bad is it.” It wasn’t as much of a question as I had wanted it to be. And truth be told I didn’t really want to know or see how bad my injuries were, but they were mine. She looked uneasily at my face as I started to carefully unwrap the scarlet stained bandage around my leg, wet with blood and pus and bacta.

  
“We did a total skin and fascia recon,” I winced when the bandage pulled as it was lifted, an angry weeping line of red cut jaggedly across the calf. “the only reason your leg wasn’t blown off completely is the plating they gave your bones during the Enhancement process.” Her voice was soft, softer than I had ever heard it before. She knows my thoughts on the changes made to my body.

  
“You wasted all that bacta on me?” I glance over at her where she sits lightly on the end of my bed while I re-wrap my leg. It still burns a little but the flesh-rage from before has cooled significantly.

  
“It’s not a waste if it saves a life Raq. You’re too important to let bleed out in the street.” She speaks towards the floor as she straightens the hem of her sackcloth tunic where it rests against her bruised knees, small and childlike in their naivete to suffering. I never replied to what she said. I don’t want her to think that she’s important to me, they would only use her as something more to take away.

  
There was a long pause between us while we busied are traitor fingers with fiddling hems and blankets, my own catalogue the surface lacerations on the palms of my hands under their own thin bandages.

  
“I brought you the Chromium.” I started, voice rough and foreign in my throat. It bounced off the stone walls in an unpleasant way, ghostlike in the too-bright. My eyes ache. “It’s not a lot, but it’s better than not at all.” I know her desperation and her wide brown eyes, unskilled and panicked. Her watering hole is critically close to drying up.

  
“I can give you a couple memory sticks for your trouble with the med stuff if I can have some water rations and plasma cartridges.” Trade is a fact of life. There are no favors here, to owe someone is to have a price on your head. I learned that one the hard way, just as others have learned from me.

  
“Turn the water rations into air filters.” She volleys.

  
“Forget the memory sticks, water or bust.” I lean back against the bed heavily, staring intently into the matching grey of the ceiling. My body is sore but at least it’s still mine. She waits a long time before giving me a reply.

  
“Air filters, plasma, information.” Alice stands abruptly as she speaks in a more pointed way than before, walking away from the undesirable thing she’s experiencing, the hem of her dress falling unevenly about her narrow calves. You and me both Alice.

  
“Information?” I wonder quickly what she could possibly have to offer me information-wise. My quiet life in the dark has a habit of allowing me to collect much more than scrap metal, anyone with a good head on their shoulders knows that I know. We’re soft creatures struggling in an intense, loveless world. You learn to keep information and gossip, secrets well should you become worse at keeping your organs on the inside of your body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	7. CONTINUED

With the help of a crutch I trail Alice, we’re going wherever the information is I suppose. A peculiar side effect of living in the dark, I have to work hard to keeping a neutral face, I don’t want Alice to know how desperate I am. Desperate people will do anything, and I’m not sure how much room I have to give before I’m in hot water myself. Besides, the anticipation is fluttering in my chest in a not altogether unpleasant way. So much of the world is carefully controlled by whatever they want us to hear, say, and do. Speculation and rumor is a rebellion punishable by death.

  
Normally she would hold some kind of one sided ‘small-talk’ like people used to, talking just to hear themselves speak or to fill long silences, so old-fashioned. That’s a luxury. I hobble after her light and quick steps with heavier, gracelessly uneven ones. Pain flares brightly in my leg but suppressed by my eagerness. The dim electro-torches shine off her straight, dark hair like a walking oil slick in front of me, bobbing daintily.

  
The open floor plan of the South Tunnels is eerie, from the center you can see every opening and escape. It’s a dangerous way to live, with a central tunnel and its offshoots, too straightforward, too easy to navigate. It’s a wonder they haven’t been gassed out yet. The only thing I envy about them is Alice’s ability to make things grow in the sour earth. I don’t know how she does it, the little miracle worker.  
The room we end up in is not that different from my own lair. The room was smaller and had less in the way of cords and monitors in it, but it was clearly functional, a closet of sorts.  
“AL? Are you here?” Alice gently called out into the duracrete cavern of a room, softly timbred voice bouncing around.

  
“Where else would I go child?” A eerie, modulated voice answered with syllabic emphasis on mostly wrong parts of words, quickly drawing up the hairs on my arms. I look at Alice with wide eyes but she waves me off and continues without delay.

  
I followed her around a tall bank of dimly glowing holo-monitors and cords, the whole spaced opened up in a breathtaking kind of way. Twice as tall and wide as it had been, a short ramp down into the main and I could see what appeared to be an enviable living space as well and one gargantuan wall made entirely of fiber-optic screen, scrolling through list upon list of data and algorithm. I don’t do it very much justice, it was a lot to take in.

  
In the prime seat of all of this was a small silhouetted person, curiously small and connected to the stationary portal by thick ropes of cord, jutting mostly out of the cranial port not unlike my own.  
“Are you still working? I don’t want to interrupt.” There’s no casualty in her voice, It’s a false pleasantry.

  
“Of course I am. It is a part of me now.” As if to emphasize their point, AL lifts a thin green cord from the back of their neck, it is a permanent connection without jack or cord-pull, illustrating to us exactly how deep the connection runs. I could still not tell much about this person, between the lack of light and the position I hold behind them I could make out little else but relative size and superficial information.  
She gestured me forward, leaning on her vowel sounds as she spoke casually. “AL, this is Raq.” I could see then that the person seemed overly small because they were only a single armed torso and head, held together even more precarious than me with straps and buckles, completely improvised but fully functioning it seemed. AL turned their head sharply towards me, ‘hair’ made of tightly coiled copper swishing with the movement. There was little synthskin left, metal underlining exposed, while eyes remained it didn’t appear as though they were functional, glazed over with the fog of age rather.

  
“Come closer, Raq” AL’s modulated voice stumbled around my name, which would have been amusing except that the way his head and eyes still gestured naturally coupled with the lack of movement in the mouth and jaw was jarring and unsettling. “Let me show you what I am doing.” AL gestured sharply again with his angular face and sharp chin. You could almost make out a small fleck of Comp1 synthskin near the right eye, but the underlining was so dirty it was hard to tell. They looked away from me to the screens and back again before I made a move. I don’t want to, but your heart hammering in your chest loses against your desire to know all. I step closer.

  
“I was part of the first wave of the Enhanced, as you can see there isn’t much of me left now. Very well because what they took I regained in my own way. They have given me the ultimate gift.” A smile of only the eyes played out on the mangled face.

I looked back over my right shoulder at my ally, impatient.

“When do I get the goods?” I want what I bargained for and I want to get out of here. AL made an odd dip of the chin, and Alice walked across the room to a power bank, and brought back a hardware portal. I cautiously popped off my cover and accept the connection. I waited for my protocol software to start up, but it didn’t, panic washed over me like acid rain.

The time AL turned his head to where I was still standing unevenly on my wound, bearing the weight of the cord in my corresponding hand.

“An interesting override isn’t it?” I think if they could have they would have furrowed their brows. I assumed that which connects us makes them aware of my functions, hopefully not my thoughts.

“No no, that’s not it. It seems I am outdated and you are not connected to me as I am to you. Can you try start up in compact protocol?” As AL spoke I followed instructions like a good Drone, soon my second eyelid fell into place and my retinal selection menu allowed me to navigate the patchwork maze that is my mainframe. “Ah yes, I can see you now, what pretty software you have, so shiny.” As they were able to ‘see’ me, my own vision went into startling darkness, but not as alarming as the sudden paralysis. Vaguely I heard a heavy thud and a scuffle that was probably my carbon body collapsing against the hard floor. Lovely.

“This must be your first time accessing another sentience.” I wish AL would speak less. I wasn’t aware Partial Beings could have a bad attitude.

“This,” Before my eyes, or consciousness rather, was a glowing, green quadrant of data that seemed to go on endlessly, numbers and words and bits of other languages floating in streams in every direction, a more chaotic version of cyberspace than I am used to. “Is Project Blackbird.” Everything around my perspective froze instantly, as if held in place by invisible strings. “The program collects incomplete and corrupted data from all open network sources, though on this scale it needs a sentience to manage it- my purpose.” Once again my vision changes, slowly materializing before me is a full-bodied version of AL, compiled of only the stuff collected. Fluctuating ones and zero’s predominately. “Once the data has been collected and scoured for usefulness it can be discarded or concentrated into a beam of a sort.” I understand now what they have been getting at, an online weapon of epic proportions.

“A b-b-bomb fo-r the Bright-t-tist O-nes” My reply was fuzzy and crackled in the unfamiliar mainframe but it got the point across.

“Yes the plan is to bring the Technocracy to it’s knees, but that has to wait, it’s not ready yet...so many little bugs to fix.” The frozen data resumed its dizzying pace for a few moments and then it all went black again. Someone had pulled the plug on me.

I woke up on the floor with my head resting in Alice’s lap, I sat up quickly, but then bitterly missing the soft warmth of her tenderness.

“What do you think? Amazing isn’t it?” Her eager, dark eyes shine under the lights.

"What do we have left to lose?” I shrugged at her as I scratched the irritated spot by my connection ports, other hand searching for the plate cover.

Honestly it was a lot to think about, madness mostly.


	8. Log: 27

“I know you will want to leave right away, but I need time to get what we bartered for. I’ll take you back to the infirmary so you can rest.” I’m quietly hobbling beside her as I walk, she knows me better than I would like to believe. I keep my eyes alert to the things around me, this spot wouldn’t be terrible if my own hideaway became compromised, it’s just more populated than I would like but that can be rectified in a hurry. There aren’t very many people here, they keep quiet and I only catch wisps out of the corners of my eyes. Maybe it’s the pain or the fatigue or the echo of the larger tunnels but I feel more alone here with Alice than anywhere else. Well, maybe not anywhere.

“Wait here please, I need to ask a question.” Alice stops me gently with a warm palm on my shoulder, I stiffen under the touch but I don’t shrug her off, she crosses in front of me and gives me an odd look before opening a heavy metal door not unlike the other ones and closes it quietly. It was light inside but I didn’t see anyone in there and didn’t hear any voices.

The whole time she was gone I couldn’t stop thinking about the look she gave me before entering the next room, so sad and almost hopeful maybe? She was usually so open and easy to read. The gritty brick of the wall I leaned against jutted into my back annoyingly but standing on my own exerts too much energy. Between the habit we’ve all developed of speaking softly and the semi-soundproofing that comes with heavy doors, I couldn’t hear anything and it was driving me to the edge.

Pity.

She was looking at me with pity. That’s what that look was, it burns in my chest and throat to even consider. It makes my bones ache and hurts my ego in ways I would rather not acknowledge. That slimy little-

“Raq, come here.” I have half a mind to refuse her and walk myself straight out of the tunnels and back to my own hovel, but the mystery of it all is getting the better of me like it always has. I’m nosey at best, and fatally curious at worst I suppose. You were always the only one who could talk me out of anything.

“You best not be kicking me while I’m down Alice.” I mumbled bitterly as I hobbled into the bright room, there was a large metal table that looked more like patchwork than anything that could be considered a luxury like a wood table. Oh my hands ache now to run over smooth wood again, just once. That would be a luxury.

My preoccupation with what once was distracted me from the many sets of eyes.

“Raq, I’m so sorry.” My eyes flash from Alice’s ashamed face to those around me, six altogether and that’s not counting Alice or I, all looking at me. The big guy with the skin dark as night and long braided hair white as ash moves too quickly and all at once my breath catches in my lungs and I want to run, suddenly it’s too light, to large and I feel like I’m drowning in the way they look at me, the more slender one next to him with the shaggy brown hair has eyes so big and locked onto me that he could take a government job as a living scope. I don’t like being looked at like this, studied, sized up. You know how I was, am, always behind the camera, never the movie star.

I lick my always chapped lips and shakily look back over at Alice with a glare that could melt the durasteel my bones are made of. I shove my hands in my jacket pockets to hide their shaking. I can still feel their eyes on me.

“What is this.” It’s not a question, that falls from my lips. It’s so much more than a question. A question is ‘where did I leave my boots?’ or ‘who are you?’. This is not a question.

“An intervention, or revolution depending on who you ask.” The person sitting casually to my right with the hard jaw and short, white hair spoke. Their voice was clear and bitter, and looked to be about as pleased to be there as I am.

“No, Volt” The little one, about Alice’s stature and hair up in two buns in a row on the top of their head spoke, more quietly than the first. It’s an odd thing to turn away from someone as you speak, I make a mental note to watch that one more carefully, that’s a truth speaker sitting across from me.

“It’s a rebellion.” The shaggy haired one, with the big eyes finished for the bun-haired. It’s exhausting trying to follow the voices around the room, especially as they bounce off the walls and back at each other.

“ _You_ are needed.” My head snapped around to follow the peculiar sound, grating like something being dragged lifelessly along hard ground. In the corner where I hadn’t bothered to spend a lot of my time looking sat a blind-eyed woman with shiny dark hair, what was really distinctive about her was the way a barely clothed and heavily tattooed woman was wrapped around her, chest pressed against the blind ones back and hands tracing shapes into shoulders.

“If we’re going to get rid of _them_ we need her.” The snake-like woman wrapped around the blind one whispered into the others ear as though I couldn’t hear her or read lips, a needless action considering the heavy eye contact she held with me while she did it. It’s them not her anyway, I dislike assumptions, especially when they’re about me.

I turned on Alice, staring deeply into those brown eyes that have betrayed me so terribly. Our deal was always just that, ours. I told her there had to be no one else, the only reason I helped her was because she had something to offer me. No one else could know about me. I don’t exist. Attachments are too dangerous. Except now I’m under bright lights and heavy eyes and I hate her for what she’s done to me.

“This is not a rebellion or revolution or whatever you’re calling it. This is a suicide, you know it.” She doesn’t answer me, she doesn’t even look at me. My leg aches more than my heart does but it still hurts like hell.

“But you’re the linguist” One of little ones spoke again, the futile hope in their voice was like a dagger shoved in my gut, for a moment they sounded just like you when we first met. Do you still remember? All that blood in the snow…

“Are you really choosing suicide by government over whatever path you could make for yourselves?” I looked around at them all as I spoke, some of them held their faces carefully blank like the snake and the blind woman, but others weren’t so guarded.

“Yes.” Volt, the hard jawed one spoke crisply. “You heard the broadcast.” That pointed chin tilted slightly up at me, daring me to argue further with half lidded eyes and snowy white hair.

“I can’t help you, I won’t help you. There’s nothing here for me.” Alice weakly reached for me as I hurriedly walked out, only struggling for a moment with the heavy door. She tried to call out for me but I could only hear the echo of a deeper voice telling her to ‘Let them go.” I didn’t look back and only stopped to retrieve what I was promised from the storeroom in the infirmary.

I always take what I am owed.

 

I spend about two more day cycles thinking about AL and the others and what’s been offered to me.

I wish I had the power to run a diagnostic scan on the situation, all of the outcomes I come up with on my own are unpleasant at best. I spend more time than usual writing to you about it. What would you do, what do you think about all of this, the usual. But the soft paper and slow drying ink don't have any of the answers I need.

Option one: carry on as I always have until the time comes for them to find me and kill me or however they plan on carrying out their blessed Extermination.

Option two: I could live in luxury for a couple more weeks to use up the rest of my supplies and then kill myself however I please, maybe a plasma bolt to the brain, maybe I could hang myself with my belt. At least then I would be choosing death instead of it choosing me.

Option three: I could help the others, worst case scenario I die, which will happen anyway, best case scenario we bring the Technocracy to its knees. It would probably be hard and it will hurt but maybe there's a chance, a fraction of a chance that we could at least weaken their hold. Maybe it would spare a few. It's stupid and idealist and it won't work. 

I think often about the things you used to say, ‘I’m not gonna die soft down here.’ I remember you saying that through gritted teeth when I had to cauterize that wound on your chest. I remember you always wanted to die historic, you said you wanted to save as many people as you could, you’re like Alice in that way. You always wanted to be a legend like the ones we used to read about in those vintage picture books you found. I don’t want to be a hero like those guys, I don’t want to be remembered for my sacrifice by those I saved, I don’t want the glory or gold or statues or any of that.

I don’t want to die.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave me a Kudo or comment to let me know you like it!


	9. Found Artifact 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Letter from Raq.

Alice,

I will solve your problem, and you will pay me. 

-Raq. 


	10. Log: 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading

It’s been a long few days, time stretched out like stringy meat, sinew. Trades have not been as profitable as I had hoped. I only got two grain rations for the databank I recovered last week, and one water case and a few credits for the whereabouts of the scavenger I got the grain from. I try to spend most of my time thinking about the bare necessities, food, water, air quality, sleeping enough. But thoughts of Alice's revolution interrupt my day to day routine more often than I would like. I tried to hush them by thinking of you, but that did nothing for the guilt that seems to have taken hold of the bottom of my stomach, actually it might have made it worse. I push you and it away for short times, enough to make a difficult trade or clean my blaster or things like that. But my homesick thoughts keep me awake long into the night cycle.

I wonder sometimes at old memories. Do you remember persuading me to tattoo over my identification mark? I was so scared, I thought they would break down the door and take us away. Even as the one eyed girl placed the cold stencil over my skin, or as the needles came down again and again on my arm like a swarm of angry wasps. I look at the soft inside of my elbow sometimes and remember the way your wide thumb settled into the crease, holding my sobbing and shaking still for the man with the cloth over his mouth to finish. We committed high treason together, and now all I have to remember that dark room with the angry needles by is your phantom touch and faded pine trees.

 

“The ghoul will be at the rendezvous point we discussed previously, your watchword is Blackbird.” It’s a different room with a different table and more maps, but the feeling of being constantly watched like a caged animal is all the same. I shift around uneasily from my good leg to my bad despite the dull ache is causes me, a nervous habit I never learned to kick. “Here” Radian, the large man with the white hair and sunken eyes gestures with pointed finger to the crude map laid out on the table. It’s folds are deep and the paper is yellowed but I’ve been assured of its accuracy, supposedly. 

“The cover building to the east of the rendezvous doesn’t exist anymore, bolt heads got it four days ago.”  Volt is standing next to me, casually passing a homemade but obviously sharp dagger between her hands in a very practiced way, I don’t fear her, but all the same I’m not sure I would want to come across her in a dark alley. I exhale a little heavier than maybe necessary and use the dark ash dust from the little metal bowl at the edge of the table to cross the old brick out of existence just like it’s physical counterpart, it feels just as violent as the blast that brought it down surely was.

“Why can’t we use a dead drop anyway if it's just some informant?” The small girl with the twin buns piled artfully on top of her head, Sine, asserts from where she’s seated on some hard plastic crates in the far corner. Her twin brother Twil is sure to be close by, I’ve been told by Alice that you rarely see one without the other. She also told me that they’re supposedly the best mechanics in the underground, but I’m not so sure I believe that. I’m still mostly certain that you still hold that position. 

“This is more delicate than that, we can’t take any unnecessary risks.” Radian replies in a patient and completely non-frustrated way. It’s a front. He’s got a wicked crease between his brows.

“Speaking of, you won’t be able to rely on that building for cover if the place is blown,” Both are looking at me like I’m speaking another language altogether. “And I mean that in a literal and figurative way.” I finished, in a slightly sharper way than originally intended. We’ve been trying to get from point A to point B for nearly an hour now. It’s starting to look like it would be easier to just storm the beach, so to speak. Even if it would surely kill us all. The agreed upon rendezvous point is in a tough spot between Hive turf and a highly patrolled area that’s a popular stop for inner city smugglers. To get caught there without a good excuse would be a very  _ very  _ bad thing. 

“Do you mean that we should go around the warehouse on Maple? That will add a good 15 minutes to travel time we can’t afford, but there is a safe house near there...” Radian trails off while rubbing at the back of his wide neck, he’s a sturdy man, with broad shoulders and thick legs, his palms are almost twice as wide as mine and he stands a good head and a half taller than I. I find his light grey eyes striking against the intense dark of the skin that covers him, in a way somehow more fluid than how the synth skin clings to my mechna. Maybe he’s still mostly whole, maybe it’s none of my business. 

“Why not cut through it?” Volt asserts in a combative kind of way, daring anyone to argue with her point. Her eyes light up in a wicked way and the set in her jaw makes me think she’s getting ready for a fight. I’m a little bellicose myself, at times. 

“I nearly lost a leg, they’re crawling with Drones.” I state simply, knowing Volt, or anyone else for that matter, can’t argue with me. Looking into me with cold eyes and one of her scabby-knuckled hands braced on the table in front of us.

“Then bring a bigger gun, puddin’.” She sneers at me with that devil-may-care look on her face, spitting the words out like they burn her tongue. She gives me one more look up and down before swearing softly under her breath, something that sounded a lot like ‘goddamn coward’, before stalking off and slamming the door behind her straight back and savage gait. When the light dust clears after falling from the ceiling Radian looks to me with a mix of exhaustion and understanding. 

“I know Volt can be difficult, but I recommend you get used to each other before you two go topside.” Radian interjects gently, long dreadlocked strands brushing over his back as he turns to look at me across the table. His eyes are achingly kind, with little wrinkles at their corners from something other than war and struggle. 

“And just why would I do that? I thought this was your revolution, not my deathwish. You go topside if you want your ghoul so bad.” I know exactly why they want me to go topside with Volt, I’m a scavenger in every sense of the word, but since my brush with field amputation the thought of going back up, especially on a still recovering leg sends chills up my spine and makes my heart stutter. 

“This is our problem: Get topside, get the ghoul, and get back here in one piece.”He looks at me, suddenly harder than before. “Now get solving soldier.”

He walked out after and I was left standing there like an idiot, shocked that Alice had shared the contents of what I thought was a confidential correspondence, and bristling with irritation at the way Radian chastised my hardheadedness.  

I whirled around quickly at the dry scraping noise, knocking my bad leg against the tables as I turned, my hand was already poised over the holster that lay on my thigh. But it was only Sine getting off the crates. I was too caught up in my own thoughts.

“You sure spook easy.” She offered me a half-hearted smile around her words, I didn’t give one back. Her steps towards the table were light and fluid. Her teeth are slightly crooked but her face is smooth and pretty, she’s got this easy look about her that, in a different time and place I might have envied. 

“Yeah well,” I say offhandedly, I don’t even want to be here. She gave me a withering look, I sighed and rubbed soothingly at my leg, trying to get it to stop aching. 

“You’re going about this all wrong, why not have the ghoul meet us on our own turf for pick up?” She drug her finger from the same place Radian had his, to a trade house closer to our operation. I didn’t jump this time as the door opened, revealing a slight, grease-covered Twil in the open doorframe. 

“Because the ghoul is a topsider, we had to pick a rendezvous he could find.” I’m not sure how much he’s overheard, but the way he drops an arm around Sine’s neck and flips his shaggy hair out of his eyes puts me more at ease. They might share a brain but at least they’re harmless. 

“So they go around to meet at the rendezvous, then what?” Sine asks of her other half with a childlike kind of wonder that makes my heart ache just the slightest bit.

He seems to consider this for a long time, gnawing at the dry skin of his bottom lip while he ponders.

“I don’t know, I haven’t talked to him. But he’s on our side so it has to be good right?” Twil mirrors the wonder Sine had in her dark eyes only moments ago. The space around them is like a bubble of contentment that I have been singularly excluded from. She smiles freely and nudges him in the side with her hip as he relaxes his head against hers with his eyes closed. These simple joys, simple gestures remind me painfully of now faded touches and memories, cloudy with time and overuse. It’s too easy to turn my face away as they lean on each other the way I still sometimes lean on my crutch. 

That’s all affection is anyway. 

 

I watch out of the corner of my eye as Volt casts her eyes to sky above us, a small but profound gesture that resonates between us like old, heaving church bells. So long in the shadows will make you grateful for some strange luxuries, looking up at the sky is not something to be taken for granted. It’s just light enough for this run, the morning still dusky and gray in the weak light, casting everything in odd shadow like sepia-tinted glass. My shoulders bunch up with the swirling combination of relief, of being out of the underground, and anxiety, of being both free and vulnerable. We keep a clipped pace. Our walk is silent, save for the labored breathing through our masks and light footfalls on cracked and weed-grown pavement. 

We agreed with the others that this wouldn’t take more than an hour at most, it’s too dangerous to stay Topside much longer than that, that we were doing everything we could to stay safe. We wind our way through terrain, known and foreign, in a methodical sort of way. Straight paths are few and far between, and for good reason.

We can’t risk being followed.

Not by anyone.

Especially not by anything.

But it was still easier to climb down from the roof of the east safehouse than it was to climb up to it from a bomb crater. 

We reached the rendezvous ahead of schedule, the door in the side of the rust colored building ajar just as Radian said it would be, marked with the arrow-crossed circle of the underground. A symbol of safe haven, as if there really is such a thing. The sight of the hastily marked door makes my skin itch, nevertheless, we enter. 

Light streams through the broken windows, illuminating the dust motes stirred up by our entrance like new fallen snow. 

“You start looking on that side.” 

I tell myself that Volt didn’t just command me to do anything, but rather that I chose to do it first and then she stated what I was already doing. I’m not very good at lying to myself. 

She turns on the electro-torch clipped to the shoulder of her bag, military grade or something like that, she’s quite proud that she found it. Between the way my eyes auto adjust to low light, and the lack of light in my home, it would just be another thing to carry. Regardless, I break off from her watch and take on the left side, which is mostly already looted boxes and slowly crumbling wall. Some are marked from travelers of long ago: help, caution, danger, doctor. 

Our Earth is degenerate in these latter days, and these are the signs that it is speedily coming to an end. 

_ “I’m not dead.”  _ I whip around, following the weak raspy sound. My right hand flies to my holster and my left to the knife on my thigh. Someone in civilian grey, the plain tunic and trousers with small round buttons and canvas shoes. A cream colored cloth wrapped around his head as though it would protect him like my cowl. It’s no small wonder he hasn’t died of air poisoning. 

I straighten up and turn away.

“Don’t speak.” My voice is muffled through my mask. There’s a small pool of blood by his right side, partially soaking through the linen, dark as rust. 

I hear Volt scuffle around on the other end as she goes about her ham-fisted way of picking, far away and obviously not disturbed by the small sounds that came out of the body beside me. I kneel down close beside him, putting my good knee against the hard ground. The grimy tips of my canvas gloves pull my mask off my face just enough for me to whisper close to his ear.

_ “Blackbird”  _ It’s such a small thing, such a small sound. 

He nods slowly, ice blue eyes staring back at me. An understanding pulled between us like sticky candy and twice as sweet. 

But, I swear that in that moment, if there was ever a way to take the meaning of a word and hammer it into a bolt of pure energy it would be enough to obliterate all that we know and hold dear. 

The next few moments happened in what felt like less than a breath. 

All at once it seemed like I was drawing my gun and hauling the ghoul to his feet. He swayed but stayed up, once I had an arm around his back. I moved him at a brutal pace for his condition, but in the moment I didn’t have any other viable option. We were about fifteen feet from the door when Volt caught on, running towards me and my very strange find heavily, pack bouncing and hard footfalls bouncing off the floor and walls. He had this wild look of panic on his ghostly pale face. I remember that it made his wide eyes look like they were going to pop right out of his skull. 

Volt all but skidded to a stop a short distance away, chest heaving slightly, right arm raised to the height of my face. 

“No.” The barrel of the gun was on the center of my forehead before she finished her short response. I’m smarter than to point mine towards her. 

I point mine towards the only person in civilian grey. He whimpered pathetically when the cool muzzle jabbed the underside of his sharp jaw. It would be a mercy killing, he hasn’t got long in him anyway. 

“You wouldn’t” Her eyes shifted off the the side erratically, “I’ll blow your goddamn brains against the ceiling.” Her voice didn’t sound any less cold when it was coming through a mask than when it was from across a table. 

“You have no idea what I’m capable of.” I start to back towards the open door, dragging him, literally, with me. I keep my eyes locked with hers until we’re outside in the strange light once again.

Then, we run. 

Volt ran out of the building after us, judging by the two warning shots aimed at my head. The first whizzed past my ear and the second only hit brick as we rounded the tight corner. Ironic.

 

It wasn’t long before he was coughing a sputtering, more than I was heaving breath and pushing myself forward, relishing the burn of every step between me and Volt. I shoved him into a tight alcove so he could catch his breath, I need him alive.

“Are you going to kill me?” He gasped and slumped against the rough stone, holding his side tightly with red stained fingers. Clearly soft, unlike my own. 

“If it’s infected I have to shoot you.” I took a moment to push the sweat-damp hair out of my face, arching back to stretch the fatigued muscles of my abdomen. He looked up at me again with those light eyes, pink rimmed and watering, in fear maybe, air poisoning? More than likely. My goggles were starting to fog from my perspiration, but it isn’t worth taking them off. I extended my hand to him, “Forget how much it hurts and try again.” He placed his heavily in mine, I used it as leverage as I turned around and slung him down my back. 

He sputtered and gasped more, close to my ear. But we were nearly home, I blocked him out and kept running. 

 

“We were attacked last night” He offered uneasily, not really sure why he was speaking, as I pried up the manhole cover with the crowbar from my pack, sweat drenched hands slipping within my gloves. Slowly and noisily it gave way, metal sliding back on pavement.

“I can clean it, but not out here.” I looked up at him from where I was crouched near the ground, gesturing vaguely to his torn-up side with the bar. “You’re coming back with me.” I added when he furrowed his brow in confusion, failing to understand what I meant when I said ‘not here’. I hope he’s not defective. 

“Why?” 

I didn’t answer him, I just gestured to the ladder within the manhole and he climbed down. Retrieved the beat up crowbar and followed, pulling the cover over myself like a blanket of darkness so deep it could be the night sky or the bottom of an ocean. 

“What are you called?” I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but that odd Topsider accent of his brought back memories of searchlights and broken teeth that I just wasn’t ready to face. Maybe I won’t ever be ready. 

“Raq.” 

He followed me through the dark quietly after that. 

 

I gritted my teeth harder than my naked hand wrapped around the handle to the door and hoped that death himself felt a flicker of fear in my presence now. If any air moved down here it would have blown straight through me. I stand now at the edge of a graveyard full of ghosts that only I can see. The ghost of good dreams past, the ghost of a smile, the ghost of shared meals. Haunting me all the same with their cool phantom touch and whispered words I know by heart. 

With clenched fists I walked into the cool, damp room against what felt like the pull of gravity itself. It’s walls feign some sort of neutrality, but I know they always belonged to you. 

“Don’t bleed on my floor.” I interject, venomous and harsh even in echo. He looks stunned, stone-still in the doorway, and with his light clothes and lighter skin he could have been a ghost himself. 

“Where am I?” 

His voice hasn’t gotten any thicker. He hesitates in the doorway the same way I did the first time you beckoned me in, covered in blood and reeling in terror. I pulled the matches out of the inside pocket of my jacket, striking it and lighting two of the oil lamps that still sit in the corner, a thin layer of dust covers them. Their glow is warm in a way the room is not. 

“No more questions.”

I sat him down on your pallet and little more heavily than I should have. He started to speak again as I stood back up, but shut his mouth by the time I left. It was then, as I was walking down the hallway that I realized that I didn’t really want to render aid. But this is what it will take for them to understand, understand exactly who their dealing with. And I need him alive for that.

The relief that played across his narrow features when I entered again was almost comical. If I hadn’t known that abandonment maybe I would have laughed. I set down the metal box carefully next to him, readying all of the supplies I would need to treat his wounds. But first I shrugged out of my heavy jacket, shoving my goggles up onto my forehead and ripping the dust caked edges of my mask away from my dirty face. Stripping away all of these layers of myself in front of another person is something I haven’t done in a long time. 

“Get your shirt off.” 

He only winced when he had to peel the thin cloth away from the wound, angry and oozing but not festering, yet. I turned on the electric cauterizer, letting it power up and readying the rubber pad and bandages. Carefully I rolled his thin shirt so that most of the blood was on the inside, pointedly ignoring the curious way he was eyeing my hands as they worked. I held it out to him without looking him in the eye. “Lay down and bite this.” 

He didn’t question me, just submissively takes the roll and lays down like a man practicing for his own funeral. 

The warm, soft light of the lamps played across his smooth white skin as moonlight on a still lake, the gash in his side the abused flesh of an earth torn apart by war. As he lay I clean first my hands with a sani-wipe, noting how few I have left from the box I took. The half empty bottle of peroxide sits just inside the box like the memory of a long forgotten nightmare. Alice told me once that it’s better to use water, but no one has enough of that to waste on something like this. 

His eyes alternate between my face, my hands, and the darkened room around us erratically as I prepare for the smaller but no less intense battle to come. 

He screams and writhes on the pallet like a man set aflame when the first dousing hits the angry skin, I know that well, the tight almost sizzling of sterilization. It isn’t over fast, I have to make sure it won’t get infected and become septic. Sweat breaks on his brow and I shut out all his noise, working with my hands only and my mind elsewhere, anywhere there isn’t screaming to echo off the stone walls. His chest heaves with healthy gasps for air when I’m through, capping the peroxide, readying the cauterizer and glad to have something for him to bite. 

I wish I had something to bite.

I look him in the eye once again, trying for sympathy or kindness or somewhere in between. I lay the rubber grounding pad across his chest.

“Before I do this, remember that I’m trying to save your life.”

He nods solemnly and about a second later the hot blade in my hand comes down on the jagged edge of the wound, he tenses so hard and so fast that his back arches up off the pallet and his legs flex tight as nooses. I work quickly to sear the gash shut, deftly moving around his violent shaking by holding his hip down with a heavy, blood covered forearm. Inside my mind I chant that I’m not really here, that he’s not really here, but either conviction or concentration breaks and I come snapping back to bloody, screaming reality. 

He cried softly when I was done, sobbing into the crook of his elbow as I wrapped the soft white bandage around his middle, soaking through in some places with blood, others with hot, salty tears. I kept quiet through this process, his sorrow is not mine and mine is not his. Him and I are not we. Singular. Always. 

When he went quiet in sleep or waking exhaustion, face turned away from the light and breathing regularly I left him for my own bedroom. I looked down at myself before I sunk heavily into my bed, covered in someone else’s blood and drenched in sweat and grime. My stomach grumbled at me angrily but I felt too hollowed out to eat anything. I closed my eyes and forced my shoulders to relax as I curled up on my good side in the blankets I swear still smell like you. And in grief, in horror, I finally let myself drown. 


End file.
